My first fishing report for the year of 2008.
Went to Bluegrass F&W area today. Only one other boat was there but they were leaving. Said they didn't catch but a couple of little ones in the shallow water.
Barometric Pressure was high today and the sun was bright. Water was remarkable clear for Otter Pit. I thought it would be more stained and muddy with all the rain and the area being under water for a month. I could see the water line up along the upper bank. The grass had a water line all along the bank. That water line showed that the lake was about 4 or 5 ft higher than it was today. I know that the entire area was flooded but if that's where the high water mark was then it holds a lot more water than I thought.
It got up to around 55 deg when I was leaving. It may have hit 58 deg F air temp. Water temperature was around 53.3 deg F at the surface.
I caught my first fish in about 5 minutes after I started fishing my spot. This was a nice 11" long White Crappie. Nice fish for otter pit. I caught two more fish from this spot but really had to work at it. I ended up staying in this spot too long. After I moved I caught 9 more fish but then it got dark and cold on me so I went back end. My fingers got cold from dipping into the minnow bucket water. I would have fished longer if they had a light at the launch ramp.
The water is still higher than normal and it comes almost up to the handicapped pad with the railing.
I took a few pictures with my cell phone camera. I'll have to email them from my cell phone to my email address and then upload them to here or to Photobucket and then to here.
I had fun but I am tried.
The wind was blowing out of the south east from 3:30 until around 6 PM. It laid down a little bit. Either the wind was blowing harder than I thought it was or my trolling motor battery is going down on me. I have a 50 lb thrust Min_kotoa All terrain bow mounted Trolling Motor and an Optima D34M Trolling Motor Blue top battery. Both are about 5 year old now. Maybe 6 years as I forget. I got the battery in Jan 2003. So that makes it about 5 years old now. The trolling motor has 5 speeds. And #4 was not making much headway against the wind today. I could move but barely on setting #4. I had to kick it up to the highest setting #5 to go into the wind.
I caught all my fish in shallow waters ore in the top ten ft of surface water. I fished some standing brush that went from 18 ft deep up to about 10 ft deep. I caught most of my crappie around 7 ft deep over 18 ft of water near a sharp drop off. This has been my go to spot over the past two or three years and it's productive at times. Sometimes it dead.
I figured that since the winds were blowing out of the south today that the warmer water was all blown down to the North End of the lake.
I could see the concrete ramp in 3 ft deep water so that's why I said the water looked clear. Normally I can't see that much of the concrete at the ramp.
I was able to launch my boat OK. There is a little bit of new algae growing on the newly submerged concrete ramp. Hopefully IDNR will clean the ramps and prevent the algae from hurting anyone. It can get really slippery on these ramps at times
I had one other boat on the lake while I was there.
It was not a bad first day on the lake. It's going to be 70 deg tomorrow so I think I may change the oil in my truck and check the spark plugs. The darn thing is starting to missfire at 2000 rpms. Once I get up to 3000 rmp it runs great. It's acting like it's getting bogged down at the lower RMPs.
I need to find out why it's doing that. Maybe it's the 175,000 miles I have on it. I hope it's just a fouled spark plug or something simple to fix. I'll have to do some compression checks to make sure that the cylinders are all ok.
I'll try to post some pictures later in the photo forum
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Originally Posted by MissinTheFishin
